The community with its own island — 2,365 acres along Estero Bay where a private Gulf beach park, 36 holes of Fazio golf, and a sailing lifestyle come standard with the neighborhood. Here's what it's really like inside the gates.
Pelican Landing is a gated, master-planned community of 2,365 acres in Bonita Springs, stretching west of U.S. 41 to the waters of Estero Bay, with Spring Creek — a state-designated Outstanding Florida Water — running along its southern edge. Development began with Pelican's Nest Golf Club in 1985, the first residents arrived in 1990, and today roughly 3,300 residences sit among mature oaks, preserves, and lakes across dozens of distinct neighborhoods.
What sets Pelican Landing apart isn't just the nature — it's what your association fees include. The signature amenity is a private 34-acre beach island on the Gulf, reached only by the community's own boat shuttle. Add the tennis and pickleball center, sailing center, kayak park, fitness center, and marina access, and you have one of the richest included-amenity packages in Southwest Florida — with golf as an optional layer on top, never a requirement.
Picture this: you park at the community marina on Estero Bay, step onto a Pelican Landing shuttle boat, and cruise to the northern tip of Big Hickory Island — where 34 acres of Gulf beachfront belong to your community alone. The Beach Park is staffed year-round and genuinely equipped: an elevated beach house with open decks, restrooms and showers, two open-air picnic pavilions plus a large screened pavilion, beach bocce, and a supply of chairs and umbrellas waiting for you.
In a region where public beach parking disappears by mid-morning in season, a boat-access-only private beach is the amenity money usually can't buy — only two communities in the area share an island experience like this, and Pelican Landing's is included with residency. It's the single feature that makes longtime residents say they could never live anywhere else.
The Nest — Pelican's Nest Golf Club — anchors the community with two 18-hole Tom Fazio Signature courses winding along Spring Creek and Estero Bay, run as a member-owned club with an updated 50,000-square-foot clubhouse and a busy year-round calendar. Membership is optional, which keeps the community welcoming for golfers and non-golfers alike.
The association amenities carry the rest of the lifestyle: a tennis center with twelve Har-Tru courts, six pickleball courts, bocce, a community center with a fully equipped fitness facility, and — this is where Pelican Landing shines — real water access: a sailing center, a kayak and canoe park on Spring Creek, leasable boat slips at the community marina and Spring Creek dock, and a boat ramp for owners who store elsewhere.
34 Gulf-front acres on Big Hickory Island, boat-shuttle only, staffed year-round with pavilions and chair service.
Two Tom Fazio Signature courses through a member-owned club. Optional membership; non-residents may join too.
Sailing center, kayak park on Spring Creek, marina slips on Estero Bay, and a community boat ramp.
Dozens of neighborhoods offer nearly every way to live in Southwest Florida: low-rise and mid-rise condominiums with golf and preserve views, coach homes and attached villas, and single-family residences from golf-course cottages to bayfront estates with private docks. Condos and coach homes generally start in the $400,000s, with single-family homes ranging through the high six figures and estates well into the millions.
Within the gates sits The Colony at Pelican Landing — a luxury village with its own high-rise towers overlooking Estero Bay, its own golf and bay club structure, and a private beach experience of its own. It's effectively a community within the community, and choosing between Pelican Landing proper and The Colony is one of the first conversations we have with buyers here.
Pelican Landing runs on a master community association plus neighborhood sub-associations, and the master dues are widely considered among the best values in Southwest Florida for what they include — the beach island and shuttles, tennis, pickleball, fitness, sailing, and the grounds of a 2,365-acre community. Golf at The Nest is a separate, optional membership decision. Sub-association fees vary meaningfully by neighborhood, especially between condos, coach homes, and single-family enclaves.
Rental rules protect the residential character: generally one lease per year with a thirty-day minimum, with neighborhoods able to add their own restrictions. As with every community we serve, we verify the exact three-layer numbers — master, neighborhood, and club — for any specific home before our buyers write an offer.
From the beach island to The Nest to choosing between Pelican Landing and The Colony — we help buyers and sellers here get clear, local answers before decisions get made.
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